Safaricom wants Sh140,000 daily M-Pesa limit increased

By CONSTANT MUNDA

In Summary

Firm’s chief customer officer Sylvia Mulinge Tuesday said the ceiling should be doubled.

CBK is reluctant to increase the limit due to concerns that the platforms may be used to launder money and finance terrorist activities.

Currently, one is allowed to send up to Sh70,000 per transaction and maintain a maximum account balance of Sh100,000.

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Safaricom #ticker:SCOM has called for an increase of the daily mobile money transaction ceiling of Sh140,000, citing growing adoption of e-commerce in the country.

The giant telco says it is in talks with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to double the daily limit owing to rapid evolution of the mobile money platforms from person-to-person payments to an e-commerce tool.

The firm’s chief customer officer Sylvia Mulinge Tuesday said the ceiling should be doubled, citing banks which are allowed to transact up to Sh999,999 through the inter-bank mobile payment channel, PesaLink.

“Kenyans do a lot of transactions as part of their everyday enterprise and therefore the more we increase the limit the more they are able to use these platforms.

“I hope the central bank will consider our application because it’s a cry of Kenyans,” Ms Mulinge said. Mobile payments have become Kenya’s most popular payment mode due to their efficiency and speed with Safaricom, which controls more than 80 per cent of market share through M-Pesa, putting its average daily transactions at about 17 million.

Deals worth nearly Sh1.009 trillion were settled via mobile phones in the three months through September, latest CBK data shows, Sh112.78 billion more than in the same period in 2017.